Light on dark holes of phobia gives hope

Gregory Thomas

During a psychology course at Britain's University of Essex in 2009, Arnold Wilkins asked his class to participate in an experiment. Wilkins showed the students two images and asked them to write down whether they found either of them disturbing. One was a photo of a woody landscape. The other was a close-up of a seed pod of a lotus flower, which was flat-faced pocked with small holes. Most of the students were unmoved, but one, student An Le, recalls being both transfixed and revolted by the lotus image. ''It felt like I was in shock,'' he says.

Le is far from alone in his response. Many people claim to suffer trypophobia, a term derived from the Greek ''trypo,'' which means punching, drilling or boring holes. It refers to an irrational fear of clusters of small holes, such as beehives, ant holes and even bubbles in a pancake being cooked or air pockets in a chocolate bar.

On the web, self-diagnosed trypophobes share tales of vomiting, sleep loss and anxiety attacks at the sight of such objects. They say the fears disrupt their daily lives.

But the medical world has yet to embrace the phobia as real.

Trypophobia is not listed in any major dictionary or in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because there has not been any research published on the subject.

Tammy Swallow Batten, 38, from North Carolina, US, said that even her therapist was dismissive of her fears, telling her ''to get more exposure to holes and it wouldn't affect me any more''.

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''No one really takes it seriously,'' she said.

Wilkins, an expert on visual stress, and her colleague Geoff Cole, are hoping to change that. They say they are the first scientists to investigate the visual elements behind the phobia. Their study is under peer review by the journal Psychological Science.

Phobias can develop for various reasons. They can be learned (a fear of heights triggered by seeing other people be scared of heights, for example), the result of a traumatic experience, or the result of biology (people who are, say, prone to anxiety). Wilkins and Cole believe trypophobia has biological roots.

So far, most of their research has focused on identifying what types of images set off these reactions rather than why. Last year they conducted experiments to discern the extent to which trypophobic images disturb people. They showed a group of people pictures - rotting tree trunks, holey cheese and the lotus pod - all interspersed with images of landscapes and other features of nature. About 16 per cent of the 286 people surveyed were upset by images the scientists had identified as inducing trypophobia; the remaining were upset by none of the images. Wilkins and Cole then analysed the characteristics of these images and found a commonality. Trypophobic images, they say, have a high contrast of detail, which makes them stand out.

No one is sure why this leads to a sense of disgust in some people and not in others. But Wilkins and Cole say trypophobia's roots run deeper than socially produced fears such as triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13) and might upend established theories about our natural defence mechanisms.

''We think the human system may have evolved because of an unconscious visual structure, not from exposure to poisonous animals,'' Cole says. He and Wilkins suggest that trypophobic images may set off a ''trigger feature'' in some people, much like the ''fight-or-flight'' response to the perceived danger of a snake.

In another experiment, the pair showed people slide shows of various images and monitored their brain activity via imaging scans. ''You get an abnormally high response with the trypophobic images,'' Wilkins says. ''It's like these poisonous things are warning us that they're poisonous,'' Cole says. Trypophobic patterns, such as those that can be found on the skin of snakes and spiders, are indicative of poisonous predators, and some people are especially primed to respond to that. Wilkins and Cole hope to figure out why.